Rise of the Dunamy by James R. Landrum Read Free Book Online Page A

with paper towels that was always present at the left corner of his desk beside his computer monitor. The purpose of the cup was actually quite disgusting, but something that Sofia had learned to deal with during her time on the force.
    Apparently, holding a wad of tobacco between a person’s lower lip and teeth produces a great deal of saliva that is filled with tobacco remnants. Once their mouth fills up, that persons only options for dispensing the tobacco laced saliva were to either swallow the solution, or to spit it out. Bishop was a “spitter”. The filthiest part of the whole process was that for some reason, even though there was an endless supply of small cups available in the break room, Bishop preferred to keep the same giant cup for months on end and simply change out his paper towels. The cup would end up collecting a layer of tobacco and saliva all around the inside. The stench that wafted over to Sofia’s desk from the cup was at times so putrid that she would often begin to gag when it reached her. The smell was indescribable, but instantly identifiable to anyone that had ever smelled it. It rated somewhere between raw sewage and month old dirty diapers.
    Sofia had done all she could to get Bishop to stop the filthy habit. She had given him documentation on the effects and probability of mouth, tongue, and throat cancer. She had shown him ghastly pictures of those who had suffered from such ailments. She nagged him incessantly, but nothing she did even slowed him down. Her only recent attempts to thwart the frequency of his habit were to throw his cup into the garbage every time she could get her hands on it. This too had proved futile as each time she returned she found him stuffing new paper towels into a brand new cup from a stash in his drawer. These days it seemed like he was dipping far more often as another excuse to slow his work on the case. The only progress she had made was occasionally ridding herself of the older, smellier cups. As she looked over to the cup that now sat upon his desk, she could tell she had forgotten to trash his cup recently by the amount of doodling he had done on the sides using his fingernail.
    In the past two days, Bishop had decided that they would follow up on several leads that she knew weren’t credible. He had rounded up a list of calls that named the areas where they had found bodies connected to the Cul De Sac Case. Sofia had believed it to be a creative idea to come up with any information that could lead them in the right direction. She had commended him for his creative thinking up until they went up to first house to question the caller about the complaint. When they tracked down the original caller, the woman was confused as to what they were doing there as the call had been from over three months earlier. Sofia let Bishop slide on mistakenly allowing a call onto his list from so long before the first body had been found in their case, until the next caller they tracked down had also contacted the police department several months earlier. When Sofia asked the woman what her call had been in reference to she was shocked to learn that she had called to complain about the neighbors dog barking during the night. When she learned that information, Sofia knew that Bishop had put no effort into building his list to find out information about their case, he had simply put together a list where calls had come in and referenced an area near one of their crime scenes. It was Sofia’s belief that he had done so in order to keep her from making any real headway on the case, even though it was highly unlikely that she would. After spending half the day tracking down some of the calls on Bishop’s list, Sofia asked what exactly he had hoped to learn from following up so many completely unrelated leads. Bishop informed her that he was asking each of the men and women questions related to their case. When she pointed out that none of them had heard anything even remotely